First to Burn (22 page)

As she stared into the box, the desire to try on something so beautiful fought with the knowledge that she couldn’t accept hundreds of dollars of lingerie from him.

“I pictured your skin under the lace.” His silent appearance behind her made her jump. He pulled her into his embrace until his body cupped hers like a ball-and-socket joint.

If she shifted an inch, the ridge in his pants rubbed through her thin robe. Some traitorous part of her wanted to push and polish in the crudest way her Jersey-girl imagination could supply. Her skin had already warmed as heat crept up her body to her throat and cheeks. Now his scent, something manly and clean like trees after a rain, beckoned.

Move away
, her brain cautioned her rebellious body,
don’t repeat last night’s screwup
.

“Did I tell you how beautiful you were asleep, with your hair spread across my pillow?” He lifted the strands trapped between their bodies.

Her brain gave up, shut down, rolled over and begged as her Viking locked her in his arms. They’d make love on the bed and in the pool and in the chair and he’d never let her go.

Never let her go
.

“Stop!” She twisted her head and brought her arms up to break his hold. Sidestepping his embrace, she retreated until the backs of her thighs bumped the mattress.

“Finished with me after one night?” His white teeth flashed as he advanced.

Given that her body wouldn’t listen to her rules, she had to cross her arms to hide the obvious points of her nipples under the silky robe. She couldn’t force herself to say words to send him away, but they needed to discuss precautions before they collapsed onto that giant bed. Ruining her career was one thing—and she had no clue how to salvage this situation when they returned to Camp Caddie—but ruining her life was not debatable.

“Right.” His smile fell away and he stepped back. “Maybe you are.” He gestured at the table and chairs with one hand, a wave that dismissed his breakfast efforts as unimportant. “I came to tell you brunch is served. Ma’am.” Her title sounded flat and hard.

“Don’t...” Before she could complete her thought, he turned away and left her to dress. The lacy underwear barely concealed the parts worth covering, and now she couldn’t enjoy them. Wearing the pink polo and khakis, which magically reshaped her butt more effectively than twelve months of power lunges, she crossed the room to where he’d assembled pastries, fresh coffee, individual pitchers of steaming milk and poached eggs.

He waited for her to sit before taking a chair, his manners as agonizingly perfect as everything else about him.

She hadn’t thanked him for the clothes, which left her feeling like a jerk as she picked up her fork and knife. Setting them down next to her untouched food, she tackled her explanation.

“I’m sorry about—” she waved her hand in the direction of the bed, “—that. I wanted to, but I was...uncomfortable.”

“Why’d you push me away?” He crunched his toast without looking at her.

This was the moment to discuss responsibility. “Last night we didn’t use birth control.”

Still avoiding eye contact, he reached for his coffee.

“I’m not—” She’d advised nineteen-year-old privates to have frank discussions about sex and Plan B, but couldn’t spit the words out when it was her turn.

“Don’t worry.” He stared into the cup. “There won’t—can’t—be consequences.”

The hollow tone of his voice warned her she was about to push on a bruise, but she had a right to ask after the previous night. “What do you mean?”

“Fifteen hundred years. I wasn’t a monk, but I never fathered a child. Neither has my brother.” One corner of his mouth twisted, but it wasn’t a smile. No lines appeared around his eyes. “Ivar certainly tried during an Ottoman Vizier phase. He grew a bit obsessed.”

Her hands felt frozen to her cup. Should she reach across the table to him?

“Modern science eventually let us look. It’s extraordinary.” He took a deep breath and blinked rapidly but never raised his gaze from his empty coffee. “Little guys have too many tails. Some have five or six.” His words bumped into each other. “They don’t swim well, not well at all, mostly circles. They get all tangled up. So you don’t—” he swallowed, “—you don’t need to worry.”

In the silence, she knew her face must reflect her shock.

Wulf shoved to his feet. “Would you like more coffee? I’m—I’m getting some.” He left before she could answer.

Nobody could be as alone as the man hunched over the sink. No wonder he sometimes had that devastated look in his eyes. Deavers and Kahananui and the rest of his team had families to send emails and packages and pictures. They had two lives, the army and home, but Wulf had only one. What was it like for him, back at Fort Campbell, when the other men went home? Where did he go?

He returned with fresh coffee.

I’m sorry
felt completely inadequate, so she kept her mouth closed and tried to think of something else.
Hey
,
now that you’ve resolved my pregnancy fears
,
let’s
—Uh, no.
What shall we do today
— After yesterday, she wasn’t sure she wanted that answer.

“Last night Lorenzo gave you another paper.” Her voice croaked, and she took a gulp of juice. “Have you read it?”

“I have.” He reached for a croissant. “Our Ostia Antica friend’s answers. We guessed right. He worked for Black and Swan.” He took his time breaking the roll in half and brushing tiny flakes into a line with one finger. “He came in from the Iraqi Green Zone and met five guys—hopefully the broken arm, the face shot, and our sewer friends, not five others—at the airport.”

She wanted to yank the croissant from his hand to make him hurry, but she knew he had to go at his own pace.

“They received text directions from someone they never met. Picked up our photos at a dead-letter drop in the Borghese gardens.” He wiped his lips with a napkin. “All very Cold War.”

“But I still don’t understand
why.
”

“According to Lorenzo, our prisoner assumed they were protecting drug operations. His mission was to follow us and report periodically. He claims he didn’t know what the other men planned to do.”

“Do you believe him?”

“Lorenzo gets results. Probably the hoity-toity accent. Or maybe the wine cellar.”

“Is he—” She didn’t understand why her tongue stalled over
immortal
. “Like you?”

“No, but close enough.” Wulf shook his head. “His family’s worked for my brother for seven generations.”

When Wulf had decided to open up, she couldn’t have imagined the explanations he’d give her, let alone that he’d answer everything she asked. It felt as if she’d been invited across a fence, leaping from outsider to insider status, privy to all his secrets.

He scraped yolk from his plate. “We’ll leave after kitchen patrol.”

“I suppose that’s best.” Her empty, streaky dish matched her emotions at the news their time was over. As soon as she’d decided to enjoy having an affair in Italy, he’d taken the decision from her hands. “We can report all this back in-country.”

“But we’re not going back to Caddie.” His multicolored eyes showed a thread of his normal bad boy. “You’re still on leave, so I’m taking you to the countryside. Emilia-Romagna, near Ravenna.”

Her imagination supplied a tile-roofed farmhouse, pasta in brightly patterned bowls and an olive grove outside a window. “We don’t have reservations—” she began.

“Don’t need them.” Now he had a full-on grin. “My brother and I happen to own a castle there.”

A
castle?
She shut her mouth to contain a squeak. Peeping sideways at the chairs with the two rejected outfits, she almost expected to see glass slippers, but the floor held only leather ballet flats. Yes, confirmation that even if Wulf did have a castle, she’d never be a princess.

Chapter Eighteen

Losing the first team in the Roman sewers had improved Draycott’s luck. Since that afternoon, he’d achieved every task the Director had demanded. He’d coordinated with the lab courier. He’d acquired mountaineering equipment, night vision gear and an anonymous van. Now he stood in baggage claim holding a welcome sign for a bogus Japanese tourist while he watched for the last member of the takedown squad. He’d already spotted the first four. If plans continued to proceed this smoothly, he had a good chance of leaving Italy alive.

The new men were South African and obviously paramilitary professionals instead of organization flacks. He had cautious confidence in their ability to capture Wardsen and a bad feeling about the brunette doctor’s odds of avoiding the crossfire.

As soon as the fifth man emerged from security and proceeded to baggage claim, Draycott pulled a cigarette pack from his jacket and headed for the sidewalk. The foul things were ubiquitous with drivers and thus good cover. Well apart from the other cabbies, he dialed his boss. “Sir, they all arrived.”

“Deliver them to Emilia-Romagna. A town called Montebelli off the E55 highway. It’s not on most maps. Cliffs drop to the sea on two sides, so I sent frogmen.” What sort of tension could make his boss speak in paragraphs?

“Sir.” Why he crept out on this limb, he’d never be able to answer. Perhaps it had to do with Jane and his stepdaughter. “The woman. Is she yellow or green?” He’d phrased his question carefully, not as an argument or a request, but as a choice between two status designations, either of which would help her stay alive.

“She’s his. That makes her red.”

Red.
A
hard stop.
Terminate.
Never before had he disagreed with the Director, but he couldn’t forget that every time he’d observed her, she’d been smiling. “Red, sir? Not yellow?”

“Red. If you like, we can debate my decision over Thai food. I hear it’s your favorite.”

“Sir?” He couldn’t choke words past the paralyzing lump in his throat. The Director didn’t issue social invitations.

“Didn’t your wife mention our visit yesterday? I felt the urge to introduce myself. Best management practices.”

He wasn’t surprised the Director monitored his family. After all, he’d advised similar security measures relating to other key personnel. But to hear it confirmed...the world outside his phone call faded. In a fog, he listened as the Director continued.

“She resembles her photos. I have several of those too. Such an open, friendly smile your Jane has, no doubt with all her own teeth. She must take very good care of herself.”

He understood the message.
I
know how to find your wife.
I
will kill her
,
with intense pain that begins by pulling her teeth
,
if you don’t toe the line.

“Thank you, sir. I appreciate—” his voice shook, but he forced himself to carry on, “—your compliment.” Jane needed to get out. He didn’t know if any of his plans were good enough, but he no longer had the leisure to refine them. “I’ll see that the packages are delivered as you instructed.”

“Do it yourself.”

“Sir?” He never exposed his identity, his first rule. When he’d audited Black and Swan field operations, certain people might have suspected who he was or what he did, but he also had CPA training and conducted a genuine financial exam. When he left the airport, he would run a real fare into the city. Truth and anonymity were his best disguises.

“You will drive them.”

“Of course, sir.” Once these men marked him, he was a dead man driving. Unless Wardsen dispatched all five.

In which case, the shit would roll uphill. He’d be blamed, and Jane would be dead.

* * *

Theresa marveled at how candlelight smoothed the rough edges off Wulf’s cliff-top fortress and transformed a late dinner in Montebelli’s Great Hall into a storybook illustration. The dancing flames reflected off a half dozen silver centerpieces, gleamed on the dark mahogany banquet table and highlighted the polished swords and axes hung along the walls.

From the seat next to her, Wulf offered a spoonful of dessert. “Lorenzo left cherry-almond tortoni.”

“I can’t. I’ll pop.” She recrossed her legs, aware of how high on her thigh the black dress had risen. After two days wrapped in his attention as they toured vineyards and olive groves, she’d become comfortable showing this much skin. It always led to the chance to show more.

His gaze lingered on her bare leg until he began refilling her glass. “This wine’s been made from our own grapes since—”

He dropped the dark green bottle, and it knocked over the crystal goblet, dumping ruby liquid across the table linen. Wulf sprang to his feet and yanked her out of her chair. “Move!”

“What?” Stumbling down the room’s length, she registered a flashing red light over the door to the bedroom wing. “What is it?”

“Security breach.” He pushed her shoulders toward the floor and shoved her under a console table. “Someone’s in the castle.”

A tapestry draped over the front enclosed her in a trunk-size space bounded by the stone wall at the back and X-shaped table legs barely visible in the dark. Her legs and arms tangled into a shaking knot as she twisted to face outward, and then a table leg scraped her shoulder blade through the lace dress. Surprisingly sharp, the hurt forced her to hold still and breathe deeply. The fabric covering her hiding spot twitched, and she jerked in time to avoid being bonked by the antique-looking pistol Wulf thrust at her.

“Two shots, not accurate, but it’s got stopping power close-up if anyone reaches in.”

Not again!
Fighting the return of the terror she’d felt in the sewer, she bit into her inner lip while she tried to steady her hands enough to accept the pistol. Blood, metallic and foul after the evening’s fruity wine, hit her tongue, reminding her that this wasn’t a dream.

“Don’t move—got that?”

Before she could reply, the cloth dropped into place, leaving her encased in darkness.

* * *

Wulf didn’t know when or where the silent alarm had triggered, but anyone who could scale the cliffs or walls was a professional who wouldn’t waste time. Intruders would arrive; whether it was two minutes or two seconds, they were coming. He’d make his stand in the Great Hall with weapons that had served him for centuries. He snatched a Colt .44 pistol from a display cabinet and grabbed a custom Beretta over-under shotgun from a wall rack, then slammed into a niche next to the massive stone mantel, aware that somewhere in his castle a man—or men—hunted him.

Seconds later the bone-penetrating noise and light of a flash-bang grenade signaled the intruders’ arrival, but flash-bangs didn’t disorient him longer than a blink, so they were screwed if they expected him to be blinded or incapacitated.

Boom.
His buckshot tore enough holes in the first man to do the job. He brought the shotgun around to a second attacker crouched behind a Louis-whatever chair.

Boom.
The fool staggered to his feet with half a face, half a shoulder and a lot of Ivar’s French furniture embedded in him. With three men left, shooting him again would be a waste of ammo, so Wulf lined up his Colt sights on someone else.

A minute later, after French-chair guy lurched into a sideboard filled with lit candles, Wulf knew his calculation had been wrong. He hadn’t foreseen the tapers toppling onto the couch pillows, the velvet bursting into yellow flames faster than a fire log or the stupid ineffectiveness of shooting into a body already burning. Impervious to bullets, fire would outmaneuver him. And far worse, he couldn’t hide Theresa from flames.

He dropped his weapon to rip a wool tapestry from the wall. Next to the cloth, the Crusher hung from pegs. The heft and grip of his flanged mace were still as familiar in his hand as taking a piss.

Uzi
ta-ta-ta-ing
, a third man popped from the floor, but flying lead didn’t matter while adrenaline flushed Wulf’s body. The roar of his blood and the roar of his battle call united as, running straight at the camo-painted face, he swung the Crusher. The arm-vibrating thwack, the thud of a limp mess dropping—way more fucking satisfying than a trigger pull. Wulf’s chest heaved, demanding oxygen, as he dropped the mace and beat at the flaming couch.

* * *

During the shooting and crashing and yelling, Theresa had obeyed Wulf’s order to stay hidden. Through the first whiffs of smoke, she had cowered under the table like a puppy. But by the time the odor coated her tongue and made her scrunch her eyes, she couldn’t continue hiding.

Don’t think about the burns you see after explosions.

Wulf wouldn’t abandon her—she believed in him to her core—but a lifetime of relying on herself didn’t stop because her lover had ordered her to
stay put.
She had to judge the fire situation for herself, so she lifted the corner of the concealing cloth. On her right Wulf beat at a flaming couch. To the left a man held a candle to a dark-tinted painting of the Madonna until flames licked the Holy Child’s feet. No question, she’d better move her butt.

She crawled the rest of the way out from under the table with the pistol gripped tightly in her hand, until, standing, she could cradle her right wrist with her left hand as she’d been trained.

None of the men noticed her. Her target moved to a painting of
The Last Supper
like the one hanging in her mother’s dining room.

Bringing her elbows tight to her sides, she pointed both barrels of the heavy pistol at his center of mass and squeezed.

Bamm
. This pistol fired at a different stage of the trigger pull than her army Beretta, the whole contraption launching from her hand like a car going seventy into a turnpike pothole.

Her shot missed. She aimed again, but only sent another wild round into a wall somewhere.

“Theresa!” Wulf shouted. “Run, dammit! Run!”

Dropping his candle, the man came at her.

The third trigger squeeze had no result.
Don’t panic
, she told herself,
just pull harder.
Then she remembered Wulf’s words—
two shots
.

Okay
,
now panic.

She threw the gun at the man and whirled away. But Wulf fought on her right, with vicious moves she didn’t want to approach, and the man was on her left. The long dining table in front of her led to double doors, another way out. After springing to a chair, then to the tabletop, she scattered dishes as she ran.

The fire starter skidded and turned to parallel her, his handgun raised as he ran, but the high-back chairs interrupted his field of fire while she sped for the end of the table.

He got there first. With flames reflecting off the whites of the eyes showing in his balaclava mask, he steadied his weapon and bared his teeth like a horror-movie goaltender.

The creep didn’t know how much she
liked
charging goalies. She spotted a silver fruit bowl on the tabletop, went for the kick and connected as solidly as she had with anything she’d ever booted in college. The weapon bucked in his hand, and she heard the shot, but the bowl must have distracted him. He missed and then raised his forearms to block her missile. That left his gut unprotected. Sweeping a silver epergne out of her way, she went into a slide like she hadn’t done in a decade, her right knee tucked under and her left foot leading, a spike she’d rocked dozens of times in college.

Thuukk.
She connected with his soft lower stomach and the organs at tabletop height. The impact vibrated from her sole through her shin, knee and hip, all the way to her spine, while the man staggered and folded onto himself. Momentum took her off the table, into him and dropped both of them in a tangle to the floor.

He fumbled for her leg even while clutching his balls with one hand and writhing.

“No!” She twisted until her kneecap threatened to pop, but she couldn’t jerk free. “Let go!” On the floor next to her hand, the tall centerpiece beckoned. She cracked it on his arm and rolled away, dragging her throbbing foot and knee, but he clawed after her.

This time she half rolled, half sat and swung the silver club with both hands. She couldn’t hear the hit over Wulf’s shouts, but she saw one of the pointed curlicues decorating the central column embed deep in the man’s eye socket. A fist-size piece of his skull squished inward exactly like a jam-filled doughnut. His grip on her leg went slack.

Her fight finished, she slumped and closed her eyes. Her soft leather flats weren’t soccer cleats, and now her foot and ankle hurt so badly that she wanted to moan. But within two breaths she realized the smoke had thickened.

Embrace the suck, her army buds always said. There was still a fire to extinguish.

* * *

Next time he wanted Theresa to stay put, Wulf vowed to rely on rope, but first he had to save her and the castle. He pounded the tapestry on the smoldering couch as she fired a second time.

She missed.

A single round from a Lancaster .577 could take down a charging hussar, and she’d missed? The man stopper only had two shots. “Theresa! Run, dammit! Run!”

Another fighter popped over the back of a padded chair, thick-barreled handgun aimed at his chest.

He dove and rolled, but no rounds banged into him or near him. Instead a single long projectile hung quivering from a charred cushion. The orange tail stabilizer couldn’t have been more visible. A tranquilizer dart. He whirled the tapestry, bullfighter style, to intercept more surprises of the syringe kind while rushing his opponent. The woolen length weighed enough that its spinning velocity knocked aside the dart gun, and they were left fighting man-to-man.

The other guy was fast and well trained. Wulf blocked a throat thrust with his forearm, but missed his follow-up kick because his opponent had spun toward a rack of spears.

Springing toward the wall to grab a broadsword, Wulf circled. His adversary’s unfamiliarity with the pike showed in his grip—a mix of a high jumper’s hold on a pole and infantry bayonet training. Wulf loosened his wrist with a test swing, and then the thrill of a fight like he hadn’t faced in three centuries was upon him.